


Aftershocks

by SqutternutBosh



Series: Torchwood Season 3: What could have been [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 03, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post-Episode: s02e13 Exit Wounds, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24060082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SqutternutBosh/pseuds/SqutternutBosh
Summary: The first episode of yet another alternate season 3! Follows on from Exit Wounds but imagines Tosh and Owen narrowly escaped their fates. Torchwood are picking up the pieces and dealing with the consequences of Gray's attack on the city when a series of time slips start to appear across Cardiff...
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: Torchwood Season 3: What could have been [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735756
Comments: 26
Kudos: 98





	Aftershocks

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is the first episode of my attempt to write the season 3 we (well, me at least) wanted to see. I enjoyed Children of Earth as a piece of sci-fi drama but it meant we all missed out on more classic Torchwood with the original team we all grew to love. What a stupid challenge to set myself during lockdown.
> 
> This series will be made up of 13 'episodes' just like a season of the show. It'll include elements of events and character developments we saw in Children of Earth but I have no plans to retread that storyline, this will be a fresh take on things using the episodic format. And Tosh and Owen will be there!
> 
> Please enjoy! I apologise in advance for any shonky science, but this is Torchwood after all...

‘Boys, wait, where you going? I said I needed the cash machine, it’s back that way.’

Cardiff Queen Street by night is a very different prospect to its daylight counterpart. Where by day it’s populated by shoppers laden with bags from Primark, Next and M&S, by night the drunks stagger down laden with chips and curry sauce. They shout and holler, hen nights and stag-dos teaming up for a sing-along as they traverse from one sticky bar to the next, students in DIY costumes stumbling along counting their pennies to see if they’ve got the entry fee for Vodka Revs.

The voice of Lewis Roberts is almost lost in this noise as he shouts after his wayward friends again.

‘Boys! Hang on!’

This time, his two mates hear him and stop. Lewis jogs up to them.

‘Didn’t you hear me when I said I needed to go to the cash machine?’ he asks.

‘Sorry, byt, we just want to go check out this pub that girl at Live Lounge was on about,’ Charlie says, gently swaying after all the JD and coke he’s already had that night. They’d started off in the Student Union, vowing they’d stay there where drinks were cheap, but they’d inevitably ended up in town after a few.

‘She said they’ve gone all out. Didn’t have time to go in herself but she says it’s like a proper Gatsby party. Don’t you want to check that out, Mr BA in English?’ Alex asks him.

‘It doesn’t exactly sound like something you two would like…’ Lewis says, the question he really wants to ask left unsaid.

Alex shrugs. ‘We figured there might be more girls there.’

A simple answer – Lewis understands and agrees with their reasoning. He also thinks this party sounds much better than the packed, greasy bar they had been headed to, but it also sounds expensive and he still needs money.

‘Where is it?’ he asks.

‘Opposite Buffalo, she said, by that old church.’

‘I didn’t know there was another pub there other than Spoons.’

‘Me neither, but she said that’s where it is. You coming or what?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a cash machine nearer by.’

The three continue on down Queen Street, turning onto Windsor Place. They’re only a few paces down the street when Lewis catches a snippet of jazz music. Charlie and Alex look round at him, excited, and start walking faster.

They pass the Wetherspoon’s and reach the corner of the street, where another road meets it. Lewis only usually walks down there to get the bus, passing the old church that was damaged in the explosions the month before, and he’s never noticed this pub before – it’s lit up bright from all windows, girls in flapper dresses sat on the steps smoking, men in tweed jackets and flatcaps gathered around them. A saxophone echoes out over the top of a competing double bass.

‘It does look pretty cool,’ Lewis says. ‘I’ll just go to the cash machine over by Spoons, meet you in there?’

Alex and Charlie nod and make their way towards the pub. Lewis jogs off back up Windsor Place to the cash machine, idly wondering if the three of them are underdressed and trying to push their way into a private party. Worth a shot.

The cash machine whirrs and Lewis suddenly becomes aware that the jazz music has stopped. It’s dead quiet. He shivers and takes his twenty pound out of the machine, stuffing it into his wallet.

The side-street looks darker too as Lewis makes his way back towards it. He’d thought the music might kick back in, but no, nothing.

‘Alex?’ he calls. ‘Charlie?’

He’s at the corner of the street again, looking back at the spot where he’d last seen his friends. There’s no one there. There’s not even a pub there anymore.

Heart pounding, Lewis runs the full length of the side street, then back up again, thinking maybe he’s missed something. Two drunk girls at the end of the street laugh at him and ask if he wants a race. One of them tears past him, wobbly as Bambi but surprisingly quick in her heels.

‘There was – there was a pub here,’ he stammers at the other girl, who seems less drunk. ‘My friends went into it, there was music and loads of people.’

The girl’s eyebrows furrow, her glittered eyelids shimmering in the streetlight.

‘Nah, mate, there’s never been a pub here, not that I’ve ever seen.’

Lewis looks up at the building in front of him, shut up and dark, the upper windows boarded closed and covered in sprawling graffiti. The door doesn’t look like it’s been opened in at least a decade.

The girl can’t be right. He knows this is where the pub had been. And now it’s gone.

~*~TW~*~

In the early morning, the Hub is as peaceful as it ever gets. The computers and other monitoring machines are on standby, just the key pieces of kit are running and bleeping away at a low and continuous volume as if murmuring to themselves. As long as the sound is constant, it’s reassuring – nothing has gone wrong today yet.

Toshiko Sato sits atop the cold metal bed of the Med Bay. Owen has attempted to make things more comfortable for her by laying out some disposable medical sheets on the bed, and has even gone so far as to plump up a cushion from the sofa for her head, but Tosh would still prefer to spend as little time here as possible. The cushion helps but it smells musty, like someone spilt beer on it not long ago. Her top is folded up to just under her bra and she can feel the coolness of the bed still nipping through the sheets.

Owen is crouched at her torso, assessing the gunshot wound just above her right hip. If Gray’s shot had been mere centimetres to the left, Tosh wouldn’t be here recovering today. Owen has told her this several times. Perhaps it’s intended to be a comfort. Tosh would rather not know.

‘Everything’s recovering as well as it can be,’ Owen says. He leans back away from her exposed skin and twists round in his seat to reach for some fresh bandages. ‘It’s not giving you any trouble?’

‘No more than I imagine a bullet wound should,’ Tosh says. Owen smirks at her sideways as he rips the bandages out of their packaging.

‘As the recipient of three bullet wounds during my service to almighty Torchwood, I’d say you’re coping just fine.’

‘And what’s your opinion as a medical doctor..?’

‘Nearly fully recovered. I’m not going to advise Jack to sign you off desk duty for now – not that I think he would – but you’re holding up well, Tosh.’

Tosh winces as he applies the bandage over the almost healed wound and presses it down.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Tell me if I’m being too rough, I can’t tell what pressure I’m applying with these dead fingers.’

‘No, no, it’s fine, thanks, Owen.’

Tosh smiles and, seeing that Owen has sat back and the bandage is properly affixed, she pushes herself into a sitting position and lets her lilac blouse drop back down. It’s loose enough to hide the bulge of the padding. She hasn’t worn anything fitted in a while.

‘No worries. One more thing though, Tosh. Aside from the knotting together of skin and muscle tissue, how’re you doing? You good?’

The old Owen had never been very good at this part of doctoring. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he’d protest whenever Jack would suggest he talk with any of them, ‘not a psychiatrist.’ Since his own death though, and how close a second one had come at the Turnmill Nuclear Plant before his breakneck sprint to the Hub when he had heard Tosh had been shot by Gray, he’d been trying.

‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ Tosh replies, and she means it. ‘I’ve been in this job nearly four years now. I’ve seen what can happen and I still show up every day.’

‘And you love it,’ Owen teases, glancing up at her from tidying his supplies away.

‘And I love it.’ 

She beams at him, slides off the Med Bay bed and makes her way over to the steps.

‘Good. Thought I’d just check. You wanted to be in so early this morning for this check-up, none of the others around, I thought maybe…’

‘I just prefer not to have an audience,’ Tosh tells him as she hurries up the stairs. She also can’t stand to see the guilty look on Jack’s face. At the top of the stairs, she turns to Owen. ‘You’ll tell Jack I’m nearly ready for active duty then?’

Owen stretches the fingers of one of his disposable gloves and slingshots it at her across the room. Tosh is surprised by how far it travels. It lands near her feet.

‘When his lordship deigns to show up.’

It’s almost half an hour later when the lights of the main door start flashing and Jack strides in accompanied by Ianto, both of them laughing about something Tosh can’t hear. Ianto carries a small box which she knows holds pastries from a particular favourite coffee shop of hers. He hands it to Jack so his hands are free to help the other man out of his coat.

Jack spots Tosh at her workstation. He raises the box slightly and shakes it.

‘We got your favourite, Tosh,’ he says.

He flashes his usual boyish grin for her, but Tosh is sure she still seems some of the guilt she’d hoped to avoid casting a shadow in his eyes. He’d been like this for a week after she’d first been shot, staring at her when she thought she wasn’t looking, hovering nearby but never saying anything. Tosh thought he’d been getting better with it recently given he was no longer asking how she was five times a day. Today though, he must have remembered she was due for her check-up and once again felt the need to atone. If he was doing it through the medium of pastry, Tosh felt no need to argue.

‘Thanks, Jack. You shouldn’t have,’ she tells him this, hoping he’ll get the underlying message – you shouldn’t have to feel guilty for something you didn’t do. You shouldn’t have to feel the need to make amends.

Ianto takes the box back off Jack and heads off to the kitchenette. He won’t let any of them eat pastries without a plate because, as he argues, the crumbs attract the rats up from the lower levels and the rats attract Myfanwy and a pteranodon in their workspace only attracts trouble. Jack drops a gentle hand momentarily to Tosh’s shoulder as he makes his way to the Med Bay. Tosh knows he’s seeking an honest opinion from Owen as he doesn’t shout at the doctor from the railings, but makes his way down into the Med Bay where they can talk quietly.

Tosh doesn’t have time to dwell on this as the door klaxons ring again and Gwen arrives, phone at her ear. She smiles at Tosh in greeting but is clearly distracted.

‘Ok, right,’ Gwen says down the phone. ‘Uh-huh… And when did you find him?... Yesterday, right, let me find a pen.’

Tosh, knowing how disorganised Gwen and her desk are, rolls her chair over and hands Gwen her own notebook and pen. Gwen mouths ‘thanks’ and starts scribbling away.

‘And he says his friends vanished?... He says the whole pub did? Mmm-hmm. Alright, thanks, Andy. Let me talk to the team but that does sound like it could be one for us. No promises, mind!... Ok, bye.’

Gwen hangs up her mobile with a beep.

‘Something interesting?’ Tosh asks.

‘Maybe,’ Gwen replies, ‘so long as Andy’s done his research and none of the local psych units are missing a patient. They picked up a student last night, traumatised, says his friends went into an old pub and then it disappeared.’

Tosh is already firing up several search and monitoring programmes.

‘That does sound a bit Torchwood,’ she comments. ‘Where did they find him? I’ll check for correlating Rift activity. We didn’t have any alerts last night though.’

‘They picked him up on Windsor Place.’

Tosh’s fingers dance across her keyboard, keying the relevant codes into her various Rift monitoring programmes. Gwen comes to stand by her side, eyes scanning the monitors for any clues.

‘Nothing obvious, no spikes or inversions, although… this flat line here,’ Tosh taps the window she’s studying, spikey blue wavelengths undulating on a black background. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one so extended before, just flat and uninterrupted.’

‘Think it could be something then?’ Gwen asks.

‘Definitely.’

‘Sounds like it’s time for an early morning meeting.’

Down in the Med Bay, Jack and Owen talk, voices low. Owen leans back against the bed, hands gripping the cold metal edges that he can no longer feel. He looks up at Jack who has assumed his go-to ‘I’m-the-captain’ arms folded position.

‘Her arm’s definitely all the way there now and the gunshot wound pretty much is,’ Owen tells him. ‘She’ll always have the scar, obviously, but she’s healing up nicely. I can probably sign her off for active duty in two weeks.’

‘Great. And she says she’s alright, she feels good?’

‘Perfectly perky, that’s our Tosh.’

Jack chuckles. ‘Sounds about right. Okay then, thanks, Owen.’

Before he can even turn round, Owen asks, voice a little louder than before.

‘What about you?’

Owen has been meaning to ask this for a while now. He’s attempted getting answers about Jack’s wellbeing in a few more round-about ways, knowing this tends to be the only way to get honesty out of Jack, but he’s not had any luck. He decided last night that today would be the time to ask him straight.

Jack frowns. ‘What about me, what?’

‘How’re you doing?’

‘You know me, I bounce right back.’

He makes to leave again, but Owen’s words stop him.

‘Ianto told me you’re not sleeping. Well, that you’re sleeping even less than usual.’

Jack glances up at the main work area, where Ianto is now handing out plated pastries.

‘He did, did he?’ Jack says. Owen admires his mastery of the blank face, the way Jack carefully schools his features so as not to give anything away. He bets Jack does alright at poker.

‘Don’t give him a hard time, Jack, he’s not trying to dob you in. He mentioned it in passing the other day, that’s all.’

‘I didn’t realise you two were such good pals.’

Owen shrugs. ‘Funny how all these near-death – and actual death – experiences can bring people together.’ There’s truth in this, absolutely. Patching everyone up after the latest horrors had been a particularly binding experience. He shakes his head. ‘Besides, I’m your doctor, I don’t need your boyfriend to tell me you’re not sleeping, I can see it for myself. And I can give you something for it, if it helps.’

‘Trust me, Owen, I’m fine. What happened last month… I’ve been through hell before. Like I said, I always bounce back.’

He turns to leave, his back to Owen, who slams his hand down on the metal bed. The rattle echoes off the tiled walls. In for a penny, in for a pound, Owen decides.

‘For fuck’s sake, Jack! I know this is usually Gwen’s thing to harp on about, but you’ve got to be more honest with us! We’re lucky nobody died when your mental ex blew up that building on us, and don’t get me started on what your brother did.’

Owen can’t see Jack’s face, but he can see the way his shoulders stiffen. Ah, there’s the tell.

‘Thank you for the update, Dr Harper,’ he says after a moment, his back still to Owen. ‘Let me know when the next one is due.’

Owen grits his teeth but doesn’t have a moment to fight back at Jack because Gwen appears at the railings, leaning over them curiously.

‘Everything okay down here, boys?’ she asks, big green doe-eyes flicking between the pair of them as if trying to suss out who’s to blame for whatever’s happened. It’s not me who’s being the twat for once, Owen thinks.

He sees Jack’s rigid shoulders drop and, although he can’t see Jack’s face, he knows the Captain is rearranging the set of his jaw so he can dazzle Gwen with a disarming grin and brush off everything that’s just happened.

‘Everything’s just dandy. What can we do you for?’ he says.

‘I’ve had a call off Andy, they’ve picked someone interesting up last night and it looks like it correlates with some other Rift activity. Tosh is bringing it all together now. Board room in fifteen?’

Jack nods. ‘See you there.’

~*~ TW ~*~

With everyone seated in the board room, Gwen hands her fellow team members a printed summary of everything she and Tosh have gathered so far. Ianto has brought the remainder of the pastries down with him but Gwen has barely touched her first one. Partly because she’s been busy, but also because her stomach feels off today. She’s going to have words with Rhys about ordering from that Chinese again, even if it does do the best sweet and sour sauce.

‘Last night, if Andy’s drunken student is to be believed, a pub and all of its occupants disappeared, including our witness’s two mates. The witness, a Mr Lewis Roberts, 20, studying English Literature at Cardiff Uni, says his mates wanted to go down to this pub because they’d heard there was a “Gatsby” party going on.’

‘Ah, the 1920s,’ Jack reminisces, leaning back in his chair. ‘The decade the human race really learnt how to party.’

‘Well, apparently these boys wanted to learn how to party too,’ Gwen ignores him and presses on. Really, if they took the bait every time Jack set them up for one of his time traveller stories, they’d never get anything done. ‘Mr Roberts went to the cashpoint while his friends, Alex Sanders and Charlie Martin, went ahead to the pub. When he was getting the cash out, Lewis Roberts was down the road from the pub in question. He couldn’t see it but he did notice it get quiet.’ 

‘Odd, definitely,’ Jack nods.

‘Lewis heads back to the pub and it’s gone. His mates too. Andy’s done some digging and neither Alex or Charlie seem to have come home last night.’

‘Not exactly unheard of,’ Owen says. ‘Have your buddies at the police checked all of the student beds in the county area to double-check they didn’t flirt their way into someone else’s home?’

‘Not exactly the best use of man power,’ Ianto says, taking a sip of his coffee. He’s matched a pale blue shirt to a darker blue tie today, looking very co-ordinated with his mug. Gwen wonders whether he does these things on purpose.

‘We can worry about their whereabouts later,’ Gwen says. ‘This isn’t just some drunk student who’s got lost and thinks the pub he’s looking for has disappeared- and, for the record, there is no pub where he claims there was one. Tosh has found something that matches up with his story.’

‘But there weren’t any Rift alerts last night?’ Ianto says, cocking a perplexed eyebrow.

‘That’s just it,’ Tosh says. She pulls the keyboard over to her and brings her Rift patterns up on the big screen. ‘There’s something going on in the Rift fluctuations here but it’s not the sort of thing we look normally for, it’s more like an _absence_ of activity.’

She taps Enter and several red circles show up on screen, highlighting the flat areas of the Rift activity. Jack studies the patterns and presses his fingertips together. Gwen knows that look.

‘Jack?’ she asks. ‘You’ve seen something like this before?’

‘I’m not sure he’s in a sharing mood today, Gwen,’ Owen mutters. Jack glares at him but doesn’t acknowledge what he’s said, addressing Gwen instead.

‘We saw this for a while after World War Two. The bombs that hit the city upset the Rift, made it act unusually.’

‘And what did it do?’

‘Time slips, all over the place, particularly near where bombs had hit.’

Gwen glances quickly at Tosh before asking her next question. ‘Like what happened with Tommy at St Teilo’s?’

‘Sort of. That time slip though, that was another time trying to push in and take over. These on the other hand - see how the lines are flat? That’s the Rift attempting to synchronise, trying to get the two timelines to fit neatly within one another.’

‘So what do we do?’ Tosh asks.

Jack sighs and lets his steepled fingers collapse.

‘We never found a solution back then. We managed to stop people entering those areas for a while and eventually the Rift figured itself out again.’

‘But there must be more we can do this time, surely?’ Gwen says. ‘And what about those two students who’ve disappeared into one of these time slips?’

Jack rubs a hand over his face, already looking tired. Gwen feels it too and it’s only half past nine. She used to consider herself a morning person, which served her well in this job, but she hasn’t been sleeping well recently.

‘We’ll take a look but that might be all we can do. Tosh, are there any other locations where that pattern is showing up? Particularly anywhere near any of the recent explosions?’

Tosh scans her read out.

‘Only one other, over on the far side of the docks. Flat line for the day before yesterday, around midnight.’

‘Send me the exact co-ordinates. Ianto, you and I will go and check out the docks. Gwen, Owen, go and see if you can find where this pub apparently was.’

As they all stand, Jack says,

‘And be careful. If you see one of the other timelines starting to creep in, do not walk into it. Monitor the spread and keep us updated, check for anyone who might have wandered out of it and is now stuck on our side. I don’t want anyone to get stuck in another time and for someone to have to shoot me so they can open the Rift again. We know how that ends.’

Gwen knows he’s joking, that he’s testing them and asserting his authority, but she hates to be reminded of what they were all driven to when they unleashed Abaddon. They’ve moved on now, she tells herself, they’re a proper team who have each other’s backs and work together. She also suspects that whatever he and Owen had disagreed about earlier has led him to bring it up.

Jack, Ianto and Tosh are already on their way out of the board room. Gwen catches Owen staring hard at his feet, fiddling with the bandage that straps his little finger in place.

‘You ready?’ she asks him. He looks up, as if remembering she’s there. He pulls his Bluetooth out of his pocket and attaches it to his ear.

‘Yeah, let’s go.’

~*~TW~*~

‘According to Tosh’s co-ordinates, it’s that building over there,’ Ianto says, double-checking the information on his PDA screen before pointing out a building with a peeling blue roof at the end of a row of battered old warehouses. Gwen and Owen had dropped he and Jack off before taking the SUV to the location of their own investigation.

Jack had been strangely quiet on the ride over, not complaining once about Owen’s driving which is usually a favourite pastime of his. Ianto looks away from the warehouses and over at Jack, who is staring out at the Bay.

‘Jack?’ he says. ‘Are you listening to me?’

Jack tears his eyes away from the murky waters. It’s a grey day and the Bay is reflecting that back from every angle.

‘Hi,’ Ianto says, giving him a little wave now he has his attention.

‘Sorry, I was… What were you saying?’

‘That building down there,’ Ianto points it out again. ‘That’s where we need to go.’

‘Alright.’

Jack strides off, coat flapping about his ankles, gravel crunching under his boots. Ianto falls in step with him.

‘Are you alright?’ he asks. No response, so he prods again. ‘Was it something Owen said to you earlier?’

Jack comes to a sudden stop. He stuffs his hands into his coat pockets and chews his bottom lip for a moment.

‘Do you think I’m still keeping secrets from you? From all of you?’

What Ianto really wants to do is laugh out and loud and say ‘Well, that’s a fucking loaded question’, but he takes a more tactful approach.

‘I think you… you tell us what we need to know. When we need to know it. And sometimes…’

‘Sometimes?’ Jack raises an eyebrow.

‘Sometimes you tell us a bit after it would be good to know it,’ Ianto finishes quickly.

Jack throws his hands up.

‘How am I supposed to know when that’s going to happen?’

Ianto doesn’t rise to this. He’s figured out by now that Jack needs to work through these things himself and that letting him drag you into a debate can only make it worse. Instead, he tries to steer the conversation back to the task at hand. He looks back down at his PDA, letting Jack stew.

‘Last sign of the flat line pattern here was at-,’

‘Owen says you told him I haven’t been sleeping,’ Jack cuts over him.

Ianto sighs, sensing that there’s no moving on with the job until Jack has had this vent. ‘And? You haven’t.’

‘Okay, first of all,’ Jack holds one finger up, ‘I don’t need to sleep.’

‘Yes, you do, just not like the rest of us.’

‘Fine, not like the rest of you, but I can get by with pretty much none. And secondly…’ he seems to lose steam. He kicks at the ground, then looks Ianto fixedly in the eyes.

‘You know that it’s not deliberate, right? I’m trying to be more upfront with you all, to help us be a better team. I’ve learnt that now and I’ve learnt it the hard way.’

Ianto can’t hold the eye contact with Jack anymore and looks away, not sure what to say.

‘I’m not making excuses, but I’ve lived a long time, there’s a load of ground to cover and I’m not sure what’s actually useful for you guys to know.’

Ianto looks out to the Bay. He can see the top of the Hub water tower from here, pick out the panel that opens to allow Myfanwy out at night. He’d heard a bit of Jack and Owen’s conversation earlier – it was hard not to, they had been talking in raised voices in one of the most echoing sections of the Hub, after all. Seagulls circle and cry overhead.

‘I think you are trying, and we’ve all seen that,’ he says finally. ‘But maybe sometimes what we need isn’t some story about you or something that you’ve done, we just need you to be honest about what you’re thinking or feeling about a situation. Let us in on the whole plan and why you think it’s best.’

‘Huh,’ Jack says. He toes at the gravel again, nudging stones over with the curved front of his boot. ‘I can try that.’

Ianto can’t hide his surprise. He is honestly baffled sometimes that he, a twenty-five year old from the wannabe-mean streets of Newport, is able to impart any wisdom on this man who has actual centuries’ worth of experience on him. ‘Really?’

‘Sure. There are still going to be some things that will be hard or that I have very good reasons for not saying, but, yeah, I can try.’

‘Uh, okay, good then, I guess. Shall we..?’ Ianto jerks his head in the direction of the warehouse and Jack nods. They only manage a few steps before Jack stops again though. The part of Ianto that is kept carefully under wraps by his neatly tailored suits wants to groan and say ‘What now?’ but he manages to hold it back.

‘Would you mind telling the others that though? That I’m trying?’ he asks.

Ianto shakes his head. ‘No, just because we’re…’ he gestures vaguely between himself and Jack, searching for a word that doesn’t exist but avoids implying he and Jack are a couple because they’ve never officially discussed it and that freaks out the part of Ianto’s brain that loves categorising things neatly, ‘… whatever. I don’t want to be put in the middle. Tell the whole team together.’

‘But Ianto!’

‘No, sorry, Jack. Either tell them yourself or just start doing it and see if they notice. Actions speak louder than words and all that. Now, come on, work to do.’

Not waiting for Jack to protest any further, he sets off.

*~TW*~*

Gwen necks the Lucozade she’s bought herself from the mini Sainsbury’s on the corner. The artificial orange flavouring is all sugar with none of the tang that comes from biting into an actual orange.

‘You don’t normally drink that stuff,’ Owen comments as they make their way down a fairly quiet Queen Street.

Gwen takes another long swig and shakes her head.

‘Funny stomach,’ she says. ‘This was always my mam’s cure.’

Owen shakes his head. ‘That is so eighties.’

‘I don’t want to know the science of it, it helps,’ she tells him firmly, side-stepping a young mum with a double-wide pram. Whenever she sees some poor parents pushing one of these, she feels immensely glad twins don’t run in either her or Rhys’ family.

‘Suit yourself. I am your doctor though, I can check you out if you’re feeling-,’

She shakes her head. She’s really not in the mood to have Owen prodding at her today.

‘Don’t worry about it, it’s just something I ate,’ she says. ‘Though I’ll be telling Rhys not to order from Beijing Dragon again.’

Gwen glances sideways at Owen, looking out at him from under her fringe. She gets a hint of the cologne he douses himself in, wary of what his undying body might smell like otherwise – it’s spicy and reminds Gwen of young lads with popped polo shirt collars out on the pull in sweaty bars. That’s probably what he used to wear it for. It doesn’t suit him anymore.

‘You’ve been doing a lot of doctoring already today,’ she says, choosing her words carefully.

Owen stops and gives her a hard look. They’re outside the bank on the corner of Windsor Place, mere metres from the cashpoint Lewis Roberts had used before his friends went missing.

‘Uh, it is my job,’ he says. ‘I do deal with live patients as well as autopsying aliens, y’know. Don’t know why I bother though, the corpses seem a lot more grateful.’

Gwen knows this last comment could never be about Tosh and is instead aimed pointedly at Jack this time round. She’s heard him give the same gripe before when both she and Ianto have protested him needing to examine them. 

‘More grateful than certain fake Americans, you mean?’ she prods.

‘Something like that.’

Change of tactic, Gwen decides – Owen has been known to respond best to directness in the past.

‘What were you two arguing about earlier?’

‘I was having a go at singing from your old hymn sheet actually,’ he admits. ‘The one with the catchy chorus that goes “stop hiding secrets from us, Jack”. He’s pissing me right off.’

Gwen looks around her, taking in the city that had been hit so hard when Jack’s latest secret had emerged. She knows that if she turns around, she’ll be able to see the railway bridge that was taken out by one of the bombs. She’s already noticed there are more police officers out on the street than there ever used to be, particularly for a quiet Tuesday morning. If she were to stop any one of the shoppers passing by and ask them what had happened with all those explosions mere weeks ago, they’d tell her there had been terrible problems with the main gas lines in Cardiff, that they had blown and caused all the fires and tragedy. She knows the story they’ll feed her because she had helped Ianto write it while Owen worked to remove the bullet from Tosh and Jack had dealt with Gray.

‘You think he’s hiding something again?’ she asks Owen. Her stomach churns again, worse than it already was.

‘No more than he ever is. I know his physiology is unique, but he won’t let me check him over, he won’t talk to me or the UNIT therapist Martha suggested. It just feels like things could blow up in our faces again if he bottles this all up.’

Gwen mulls Owen’s words over as she takes another sip of her drink and grimaces. So sickly sweet, she’s more of a bitter lemonade girl really.

Jack hadn’t been himself recently. He did a good job at spreading a veneer of Jack over the surface with his cheesy grins and even cheesier jokes, but Gwen had caught him staring off into nowhere a number of times. She’d come across him stood outside a particular morgue drawer more than once too.

Her PDA beeps in her hand. Tosh has reconfigured the settings so the software can pick up when a flat line appears to be converging. Gwen rubs her neck.

‘Let’s give him a bit more time, yeah? Like, maybe if he’s still hiding from us by the time Tosh is back in action, we all gang up on him and force him to talk or do whatever he needs to do.’

‘Yeah, alright. Let’s just hope nothing happens before then,’ Owen agrees. He readjusts his leather jacket, pulling the zip up higher. ‘What’s that beeping for?’

Gwen checks the PDA. ‘Looks like one of the flat lines is about to happen, right where our boy last night says he saw the pub. Let’s go.’

They walk quickly down Windsor Place, the beeping of the PDA getting louder. At the corner of the street, where Windsor Lane meets Windsor Place, Gwen stops and gasps.

The pub is slowly coming into view. It’s as if the time slip started at the front door, and ripples outwards like a droplet of paint dropped on water, spreading colour and light. Sounds comes with it too – a cheer, as if Wales have just scored a try in a tense Six Nations match. There’s no way a place like this, so clearly from another, older time could be showing a match though so maybe it’s something simpler, like a regular hitting the triple 20 on the dartboard and his mates are shouting and lifting their pints in celebration.

Gwen goes to walk towards it but Owen grabs her arm and pulls her back.

‘Keep a safe distance, remember?’ he taps at the Bluetooth in his ear. ‘Tosh, we’ve got a live one.’

Tosh’s voice sounds in her ear. ‘Getting the readings from you now. Looks like it’s still coming through, the lines haven’t fully converged yet. What does it look like?’

‘Like one of those black and white films,’ Owen says. ‘But, like, when they start in black and white and then they add a bit of colour and it spreads.’

‘It smells too,’ Gwen adds. ‘Hoppy, like proper old ales.’

Now it’s Jack coming across their comms lines. ‘Are there people? Anyone going in or any twenty-first century people getting too near?’

‘Nah, they all seem happy enough inside for now,’ Owen says.

Gwen presses her finger to her ear and says, ‘We’ll stop anyone getting too near while we’re here. I’ll give the police a call and get them over here to rope it off when it’s disappeared again.’

‘Good work, sounds like we’ve got all the evidence we need that our drunken student wasn’t all that drunk. Ianto and I have nearly finished up here, no similar signs of activity yet but can you get your police buddies to stop anybody coming here too?’

‘Will do.’

‘And remember both of you, keep your distance. No adventures through time today please.’

Jack hangs up from his end and Owen rolls his eyes.

‘Hypocrite.’

*~*TW*~* 

Jack rings off the call with the others. He can see Ianto’s torchlight swinging in arcs on the other side of the warehouse. He doesn’t know what this building was last used to store, but it reeks of boiled cabbage.

‘Anything?’ he calls over to Ianto.

‘No,’ he calls back, voice echoing. ‘Residual traces were stronger over your side.’

Jack looks down at his vortex manipulator. It shows him details of temporal disturbances that only he can understand – he knows Tosh would love to get her hands on it and could probably get more information out of it than he can despite his Time Agency training, but if the Doctor says even Jack can’t have it functioning properly, then he’s not giving it to Tosh. She’d probably fix it - and wouldn’t that be tempting.

The readout shows there’s been recent Rift activity right where he’s stood.

Something clatters in the darkness nearby, the sound of something metal falling and hitting the concrete floor. Jack points his torch in the direction the noise came from. Dust motes dance in the white beam of light.

‘Hello?’ he asks, stepping closer to it. His free hand goes to rest on the hilt of his Webley. Knowing his luck, it’s a weevil that had been feeling shy until now but will pounce as soon as he gets near.

He hears something again, shuffling. His torchlight falls upon a stack of crates pushed up against the wall. The beam of Ianto’s torchlight joins it as he appears at Jack’s shoulder.

‘You found something?’ he asks quietly.

‘Could be nothing. But be ready.’

Ianto mimics Jack’s pose, hand at the gun on his hip, torch held up next to his face.

More shuffling. Jack takes a few more steps, now only metres away from the boxes.

‘We’re from Torchwood. We won’t hurt you and we’d appreciate you returning the favour. Do you need help?’

One of the boxes moves. Jack is ready to whip his Webley out and focus it on whatever appears, but what appears takes him by surprise.

A small, pale face – a child’s face. Grubby, matted hair, only slightly taller than the crates he’d been crouched behind.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ the boy says. He has a thick Valleys accent, his vowels hanging in the air that few milliseconds longer, bouncing between syllables. ‘My ship left without me and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘It’s a kid,’ Ianto says, hand falling away from his gun. He sounds to Jack more flummoxed than if they’d discovered a rabid Saskato newly arrived from the Jungle Nebula. Jack takes great joy in serving him the sort of ‘No shit, Sherlock’ look that Ianto is so proficient at giving others.

Jack crouches so he’s level with the boy. He can see his clothing now – a stained white shirt that’s clearly too big for him and hangs off one shoulder, patched trousers and a jerkin that’s longer on one side than the other. He squints against the torchlight. Jack lowers his torch. The boy trembles as the beam falls across his chest.

‘That’s alright, we can help you,’ he tells the boy. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Joseph. I’m cabin boy on the Polaris.’

‘Cabin boy, eh? You been on many trips?’

‘This was going to be my first one. The other cabin boys, the older ones, they sent me back here to fetch some buckets but then it got dark and I was here, and no one else was.’

‘But this is where you were? The same place?’

Joseph scrunches his lips up as he thinks.

‘It looks a lot the same but with no boats and no people. I didn’t know what to do so I hid here and then, and then…’

‘And then?’

‘I fell asleep.’

Jack smiles. He notices then that Joseph has no shoes and that his shivers are not just due to nerves but because of the frigid air of the warehouse. Still on his haunches, he shucks his coat off and offers it out to the boy.

‘Take this. We won’t tell anyone you were sleeping when you should have been working.’

Joseph doesn’t move. Jack shakes the coat, coaxing him over.

‘We’re going to help you out, Joseph. It’ll be okay.’

Slowly, Joseph reaches out a trembling hand. He finds his way into the coat, which is comically too large for him. He blinks up at Jack through his sandy fringe and Jack is heart-tugglingly reminded of the only other little boy he’s let wear his coat. He should give Alice a call.

Jack stands and turns his back to the boy, gesturing at Ianto to lean in.

‘Can you take care of him a minute while I finish the sweep here, make sure no one else has come through?’

The look of panic that Ianto attempts to hide is one of the main reasons he has decided to ask Ianto this. Sure, he could ask Ianto to finish the sweep and Jack would happily chat away to Joseph, entertaining him with all sorts of swashbuckling tales, but he got the sense from Ianto’s reaction to the boy that Ianto isn’t comfortable with small children. Yes, Jack concludes, this is going to be by far the more fun option.

‘I can finish the sweep,’ Ianto says. ‘I love a good sweep.’

‘No, no, this is safer, trust me.’

‘Jack.’

Ianto hits the ‘k’ of Jack’s name hard, which Jack knows is his way of warning Jack that he knows what he’s up to.

‘What?’ he says innocently.

‘You know what! What am I supposed to talk to him about? We don’t even know when he’s from, other than a time where child labour was considered perfectly fine and dandy. I can’t exactly ask him if he likes, I dunno, the Power Rangers or something, can I?’

‘See if you can find out when he’s from then. Just talk to him like an actual person, Ianto, just like he is, only smaller. Back in a minute.’

He darts off, making his way over to check the back rooms of the warehouse.

Faintly, he hears Ianto say to a perplexed Joseph,

‘So, do you… like boats?’

~*~TW~*~

‘How old is he?’ Gwen asks.

Jack and Ianto have brought Joseph back to the Hub with them. He’d gone very quiet sandwiched in the back of the SUV between Gwen and Ianto on the way over, curling up inside Jack’s coat and refusing to wear a seatbelt. Jack had done what he could to explain things in terms he thought Joseph could understand, to reassure him that he’d be looked after whatever happened, but the young cabin boy hadn’t said much in return. He was with Tosh now, who’d taken a shine to him after he’d been drawn in by her bank of computer monitors.

Jack watches the pair through his office window, Gwen perched on his desk. Ianto beats the dirt out of Jack’s coat on the other side of the office, doing it so noisily that Jack is sure he’s trying to get some sort of point across to him.

‘Haven’t managed to get that out of him. Don’t know _when_ he’s from either. But we do know he likes boats.’

He looks over to Ianto and smirks at the adorable scowl that’s being thrown at him.

‘Looks like he’s maybe nine or ten?’ Gwen suggests.

Jack shrugs. ‘Maybe. Being younger is a good thing with these time displacements, I’ve seen it happen before. All that elasticity of the brain, that lack of experience. He’s a cabin boy who hasn’t been out to see the world yet, why shouldn’t it look and work like this? If he’s stuck here, he’ll pick things up fast and we can find someone to take care of him.’

‘Could be a better life for him,’ Gwen says.

‘He’d be much less likely to die at sea,’ Ianto says. He stands and looks out the window too. ‘You know that basically no one on those old ships knew how to swim?’

‘Being able to swim doesn’t help you much when you’re turned out in a raging storm in the middle of the Atlantic. Trust me.’

Jack settles back in his chair and looks up at Gwen.

‘Swimmer or not, we still have to try to get him back to the right time,’ she says. ‘Right?’

‘Like I said earlier, no promises. We’ll try.’

Owen walks in, a thin folder open in his hand.

‘Is he healthy?’ Jack asks.

‘As he can be, for a kid from ye olde times,’ Owen replies. He slides a finger down the page in front of him. ‘Bit underweight, needs more vitamin D. But we all need more of that in soggy old Wales, look how pale those two are.’

He nods in the direction of Gwen and Ianto.

‘I do believe the _zombie_ is giving us grief about our beautiful Welsh complexions, Gwen,’ Ianto says to his fellow patriot.

‘He’s just jealous,’ Gwen says. ‘He could never be this tan.’

Owen mocks laughter and closes the folder. ‘What next, Jack?’

Jack turns to Gwen, kicking his feet up onto his desk. Gwen, Owen and Ianto form a semi-circle around the front of his desk, ready for orders. Or, as has happened plenty of times in the past, ready to disagree with him if they don’t like what he has to say. He remembers the conversation he had with Ianto earlier and takes a breath.

‘Did you get the area around the disappearing pub closed off?’

Gwen rolls her eyes and folds her arm. She looks a little paler than her usual freckled self to Jack’s eyes – maybe Owen did have a point about that vitamin D.

‘I did, but it was a right palaver. The new DCI at Central wasn’t having any of it, didn’t like it when I got Torchwood involved either, that definitely made things worse.’

Jack drums his fingers on his desk, his other hand playing about his jaw.

‘That’s not the only time that’s happened recently,’ he says. 

‘They didn’t like it when we pulled rank before… what happened. They like it even less now they know our name is attached to all the damage around the city.’

‘We’ve got to work that bit harder then, prove ourselves.’

Owen scoffs at that, tucking Joseph’s medical report under his arm.

‘Come on, Jack, really? I don’t want to be sucking up to some flatfoot.’

‘Seriously, Owen. I don’t like it either but we need them on side in times like these. It’s one thing for us to go swanning into individual cases but when it’s citywide? We need them. The other option is UNIT and, other than the cute red caps, I haven’t got much good to say about them. Now, are you going to be nice to Her Madge’s constabulary?’

‘Alright, _fine_.’

‘Good. So, that’s the area around the pub closed off.’

‘Marked out with police tape, with a PC watching at either end of the road. They’ve got my number to call straight away if anything odd happens, not that they’ll realise what I mean by that until it happens.’

‘Have they got men at the docks too?’

Gwen shook her head. ‘No, DCI Brooks would only give me people around the Windsor Lane area and he said that was only because of the report of the students going missing near there. He said the area of the docks we want closed off is private land with no operational business and that anyone who goes there is trespassing.’

Jack waggles his eyebrows. ‘Ooh, trespassing. I’ve been so naughty today already and I haven’t even had my second coffee.’

He’s met with three synchronised eye rolls.

‘You’re all no fun. Ianto, can you ask Tosh to keep an eye on the docks? Any camera feed she can get of the area near where we found Joseph is going to be better than nothing.’

Ianto nods curtly. Seconds after, he nearly collides with Tosh in the doorway as she rushes in.

‘Oh, sorry, Ianto!’ she says it brightly, but Jack spots the momentary motion of her hand flitting down to her hip, protecting her wound. Ianto steps aside and gestures her into the room. Jack checks through his slatted blinds and sees she’s left Joseph playing with her Rubik’s cube, his legs dangling from his perch on one of the wheeled office chairs.

‘The new monitoring system is picking up some more flat lines, Jack, further out of town this time.’

‘Where to?’ Ianto asks.

‘Looks like it’s right in the middle of the greens at St Mellon’s Golf Club.’

‘That’s near Turnmill,’ Ianto says.

Jack swings his legs off his desk and stands.

‘Location like that, it could cause a hell of a lot more of a disturbance than our other time slips. Ianto, Gwen, Owen, let’s go check it out. Tosh, are you alright looking after the kid and being our genius in the chair?’

‘No problem,’ she says.

As the other three march out of the office to grab their things, Jack sends a wink Tosh’s way.

‘Keep us updated.’

*~*TW~*~

It’s quite clear when they get to St Mellon’s Golf Club that the time slip has indeed caused a hell of a disturbance. Several cars whip past them on the long driveway, going at least five times the 10 mile per hour speed limit that the frequent signposts dictate they should be observing. Thick black smoke clouds the sky behind the red brick club building. There are already two police squad cars pulled up outside and Ianto can hear the faint thud-thud of a helicopter low overhead.

Jack pulls the SUV into a completely unnecessary and unexpected handbrake turn to pull up next to the police cars. He laughs when his three passengers all grab at whatever’s nearest them for support as the car spins out on the gravel. Unfortunately for Ianto, what was nearest Gwen was his thigh, which now has her fingernails stabbing into it.

‘That got your adrenalin up ready!’ Jack barks. He catches sight of Gwen’s hand on Ianto’s leg in the rear view mirror. ‘Something going on in the back that I don’t know about?’

Gwen relinquishes her grip, pats Ianto’s thigh gently and mouths ‘sorry’.

Jack and Owen are already getting out of the car and Ianto follows suit. He checks his Bluetooth is working, that his gun is loaded and he has spare ammunition, and falls in line with the others as they stride towards the clubhouse.

‘Woah, woah, woah,’ one of the police officers, young with a patchy beard, says as they approach. He holds his palms up flat having clearly learnt his trade from a cartoon. ‘You can’t come in here, this is an active crime scene.’

‘Torchwood,’ Jack says simply.

‘Yeah, we heard you might show up,’ says the young officer’s partner, a middle-aged woman with flyaway ash blonde hair, wearing practical, street-stomping shoes.

Normally, Jack wouldn’t engage with this conversation, he would just push past and repeat the word Torchwood. Vein in his temple twitching, Ianto can see him trying to practice what he preached to Owen.

‘I don’t know what you’ve heard about us. We’re not here to cause problems, we’re here to help.’

The two officers glance between one another. They’ve clearly been given their orders about Torchwood and it’s not within their gift to go against that. The thud-thud of the helicopter is getting closer, like a large fly swooping in behind them beating its wings furiously.

Gwen opens her mouth to see if she can smooth things over, Ianto’s sure, but Jack puts his hand up to stop her.

‘Now, I can’t see what’s going on behind this building,’ he says, ‘but I’ll ask you this: Do you think your teams are equipped to handle it?’

The young officer looks at his partner open-mouthed. She sighs and says,

‘I’m going to get in trouble for this. Go round the building and see for yourselves.’

‘Thank you,’ Jack says. ‘Constable..?’

‘PC Mitchell.’

‘Thank you, PC Mitchell. We’ll put a good word in for you, for what it’s worth.’

As a unit, they march off round the edge of the clubhouse, gravel crunching under foot. Having experienced all sorts of different fire related incidents during his time at Torchwood, Ianto can pick out a few things from the acrid scent of the smoke that hangs heavy in the air – rubber, plastic and grass, maybe even motor oil. That’s worrying.

The grey of the early morning has cleared up now, blue skies and bright sun shine down over the carefully manicured lawns of the golfing greens. If it wasn’t for the two flaming golf carts, the blackened streaks in the turf and the sparkling titanium front end of what appeared to be a large spacecraft on the second hole, it would be an ideal day for a spot of golf - if you were into that sort of thing. Ianto can’t imagine anything more dull than wandering around, slowly hitting a small ball into a faraway hole but he can’t exactly pass judgement as he would readily admit he enjoys a good bit of filing. So satisfying when everything is in the right place.

‘Now that is going to make getting par difficult,’ Jack comments, taking in the scene before them. Ianto is surprised he knows any golfing terminology, though isn’t sure he’s used it correctly.

Two figures stand at the base of the spacecraft. They’re clad in bulky grey outfits with silver camo patches, layered up over their torsos with metal padding. They’ve paired this with heavy-duty grey boots and fingerless gloves, and their eyes are hidden by wrap-around visors that remind Ianto of the Terminator. Both carry large guns, holding them in two hands to support the weight.

One of them shouts something Ianto can’t quite make out and raises his gun. He blasts it up in the air, flames shooting upwards – a warning.

‘I was worried this would happen,’ Jack says. ‘Reverse time slips, future into past. They can be tougher to deal with.’

‘You’ve seen this before?’ Gwen asks.

‘Only once. And just like these guys, they were ready for a fight.’

‘Let’s see if we can talk to them,’ she suggests, already tucking her gun away. ‘Right? Explain what’s going on.’

The figures by the ship are shouting again but the Torchwood team still aren’t close enough for Ianto to make out what they’re saying. They fire another warning shot up in the air.

Jack tucks his own weapon away, following Gwen’s lead. Ianto himself would prefer that they keep their weapons out and ready given how unprotected they are but follows suit.

‘We’ll give it a go. Hands up, approach slowly, we’ll get close enough to talk with them. Any sign of hostility, get yourselves to safety and we’ll regroup from there. We won’t engage in a fight if we don’t have to.’

Ianto scans the golfing greens, looking out for anywhere they could get to this ‘safety’ Jack has said they should run to if things go tits up. Other than a few trees and some bunkers, they’re pretty exposed. They walk slowly forwards, all of their arms raised. They pass one of the burning golf carts and the heat from the flames licks at Ianto’s skin.

‘They don’t look happy to see us, Jack,’ Owen mutters as they get closer. The figures – Ianto thinks they may both be men now, human (or humanoid) men – still have their guns in hand, training them on the team. Their feet are spread and stance set to deal with the recoil. One of them taps at the side of his visor and an additional square panel flicks down over the front, covering the eye Ianto suspects he uses to aim.

‘Stopio!’ one of them shouts. ‘Stopio nawr! Byddwn yn saethau!’

‘Hang on…’ Ianto starts as they press on. Something about what the men have just shouted latches onto a distant memory buried deep in his brain.

‘Wyt ti’n byddar? Stopio!’

‘I don’t recognise this language, we’re going to need Tosh to run a translation for us,’ Jack says.

Ianto looks to Gwen.

‘I couldn’t hear them properly at first,’ she says.

‘Me neither, but that’s definitely -,’

The man from the future opens fire. Burning hot tongues of flame burst towards them. Ianto dimly hears Jack shouting some instruction but he doesn’t need to know exactly what he’s saying to follow it, his own instincts are already kicking in and driving his legs forward to the nearest bunker.

He dives in, expecting the sand to offer a softer landing than it does. Instead, he realises how shallow the thing actually is when it wallops him in the ribs and he coughs, sand getting into his mouth. He tries not to think about what wild animal might have pissed in it as he spits it out.

Gwen and Jack land beside him, not quite as quick getting to the bunker as he was. Jack uses one hand to cover Gwen’s head and the other to pull Ianto down flat as fire leaps out over the edge of the bunker. Gwen rolls over.

‘It’s Welsh, Jack, they’re speaking bloody Welsh,’ she says. ‘How do you still not recognise that after living here so long?’

‘Sooorry, but it took you two long enough,’ Jack retorts. He leans back into the bunker, pushing himself up slightly. ‘Where’s Owen?’

Ianto has a sudden vision of Owen, having been caught in the flames, still walking around as an extra crisp dead man with even more to bitch about than before. Luckily, Gwen points out that he’s actually sheltered behind a large oak tree a few metres away. He looks mutinous as the flamethrowers light up the branches over his head. Maybe he’s pictured his future as a blackened and burnt undead man too.

Gwen leans over Jack to speak to Ianto.

‘How much GCSE Welsh can you remember?’ she asks.

‘Oh, y’know, I could ask you if you want to go to the cinema or whether you watched the rugby on the weekend,’ he says, wracking his brain. Now he’s realised it’s Welsh they’re speaking, he’s surprised by all the remnants he’s able to dig up, none of which are useful for this turn of events. There wasn’t a module on conversing with belligerent attackers from the future. ‘You?’

‘My Great-Nan used to sing Sosban Fach to me when I was a kid. Dai bach y soldiwr.’

The fire overhead stops.

‘I remember one thing though. I might not remember the tenses or how to ask it formally, but it might just work.’

‘Ianto…’ Jack growls, as Ianto shuffles round and starts to push himself up so he can see over the bunker. ‘What’re you doing?’

Ianto spies the two men. They’ve tossed their other weapons aside and are now walking towards their shelter, more traditional looking pistols in hand. He shuts his eyes tight for a second, questioning whether what he’s about to do is stupid or brave, then hauls himself to his feet, arms up.

‘Saesneg?’ he shouts. ‘Wyt ti’n siarad Saesneg?’

The men stop.

‘We speak English, yes,’ the one on the right says. He touches a button at the side of his visor and it slides open to reveal blue eyes, squinting in the sun.

Shit. Ianto’s not normally the negotiator, he usually lets the others do the talking.

‘We, uh, we come in peace?’

Jack pulls himself up besides Ianto. He brushes sand off his lapels.

‘If you’d be so kind as to put your weapons down, boys,’ he says. ‘We’re here to help, we can explain. Where are you from?’

The pair relax their grip on their pistols but don’t entirely lower them.

‘What’s it to you?’ one asks.

‘That craft,’ Jack nods in the direction of the ship. ‘That’s what… thirty-fourth century?’

‘Thirty-third.’

‘You’re in the twenty-first century now. 2008. Let us see if we can help you get back.’

Even though one of them still has his visor down, Ianto knows he’s looking at the other sceptically.

‘Why should we believe you?’ he says. ‘There’s a war going on. You Plutonians have already proved your skill with chemical weaponry, with making us see things that aren’t there.’

‘Plutonians?’ Gwen says quietly at Ianto’s shoulder.

‘Probably mad that we downgraded them to dwarf planet,’ he suggests. Jack scowls at them both.

‘We’ll keep our weapons holstered,’ Jack says. ‘Just trust me for one minute while I explain.’

The men discuss between themselves for a moment, in whispered Welsh.

‘One minute,’ the one on the left says eventually. ‘If we don’t believe you after that, we shoot.’

‘Deal,’ Jack agrees.

Just as the men are beginning to lower their weapons, all hell breaks loose. Their ship, which had been looming and casting a shadow over them, starts to wink and fade away. Ianto’s PDA bleeps loudly from his pocket as the programme picks up the Rift flat lining again, though he can only just hear it over the sound of the police helicopter coming in close overhead.

The men panic, looking between their disappearing spaceship and Jack. Ianto desperately tries to stop the beeping of the PDA, but it’s all caught up in the lining of his pocket from his dive into the bunker.

‘What’re you doing?’ they shout. ‘Stop this now!’

Ianto manages to silence the PDA but there’s not much they can do about the slowly vanishing spaceship or the police helicopter hovering overhead.

‘Put all weapons down,’ a voice booms out from the helicopter. ‘Put all weapons down now. That includes you, Torchwood.’

Unsurprisingly, this command does nothing to soothe the panicked men. Jack is shouting at them, telling them to do as they say and he’ll help them figure it out, but it’s too late. The men open fire.

Jack launches himself in front of Ianto as they pull the trigger. Ianto sees Jack’s blood spurt out from his chest, feels the sticky heat of it as it splashes across his own cheek as they both fall, taking Gwen down with them. More gunshots crack the air above them.

Ianto rolls Jack off him. Gwen is up on her feet, firing back, her Sig held in both hands.

‘Torchwood, drop your weapons,’ the voice from the helicopter calls again.

‘Jack,’ Ianto says, pulling the other man’s shirt open as the blood spreads. The hole in Jack’s undershirt is larger than Ianto expected from such a small pistol, the edges singed black.

Owen arrives at their huddle, kicking up sand.

‘Out of my way please, Ianto,’ he says softly, nudging Ianto’s shoulder. ‘Come on, let me do my job.’

Gwen drops down beside them as Owen chucks his bag down and searches through it.

‘They’ve gone,’ she says. ‘Disappeared with the ship. Oh-ho, but I’m going to have words for the police, you watch me.’

‘We all will,’ Owen says as he rips open a spool of gauze.

‘Owen,’ Jack croaks. ‘No good.’

‘You want us to… let you finish?’

Jack’s lips twist into a rueful smile. ‘Quicker. Easier.’

‘You know that’s against everything I swore to uphold when I became a doctor, right?’

Jack pats at his hand. ‘You’re a good doctor.’

‘Working with you doesn’t do much for my ego.’

Owen clears his throat and starts repacking his med bag. He hands Ianto a wipe for the blood on his face, which he takes, distracted.

Jack’s breath is catching in his throat. Ianto knows he must be about to die. Jack twists his neck slightly to look at him and smiles. Ianto does what he can to return the gesture. He doesn’t feel like smiling right now.

‘We’ll be here when you wake up, Jack,’ Ianto tells him, trying to sound reassuring but pretty confident he hasn’t quite got there. Jack may be used to this but Ianto has only borne witness a few times before and has hated every time. ‘I’ll be here. Then we can all go and shout at the police together.’

Jack chuckles, then closes his eyes. His chest stops rising and falling and Ianto starts counting down the seconds until he sees Jack gasp back to life.

~*~TW*~*

Tosh heard the events at the golf club go down over her Bluetooth. There hadn’t been any way she could help and she had only had a distant view of what was happening through the clubhouse security camera that she’d hacked into. She usually didn’t mind being the one left at the Hub, supporting the team out in the field with her quick-thinking and computer skills, but she hated when that position left her feeling helpless. For some reason, it felt even worse now that she was desk bound, as if she could have been out there with them helping if she was strong enough.

She felt stronger by the day now. The first week after she’d been shot had been hard, coping with the pain and the totally draining weakness brought on by the blood loss. She could still remember Owen commenting, as she slipped in and out of consciousness as she treated her, that it was lucky Ianto and his veins full of O negative were on hand to restore her blood levels. It went unsaid that without this Tosh would have died.

She doesn’t dwell on it, except for moments like these. She’s faced her own mortality plenty of times in this job and made her peace with it long ago. Today, she’s just frustrated that she feels unable to be an active member of the team.

‘We’re heading back now, Tosh,’ Owen’s voice cuts in. ‘Jack’s come back round, he’s in the SUV.’

‘Good. Anything I can help with?’ she asks.

‘Only if you fancy working a bit of green light magic for our way back.’

Tosh smiles wryly. ‘Jack says that’s for emergencies only.’

‘Yes, and Jack used it to get to the chip shop before it closed the other day so I’d say his definition of emergency is fairly flexible.’

Tosh laughs. She hits a few keys on her keyboard, bringing up the programme that links her to the SUV. With a few more clicks, she’s set the SUV to trigger all red traffic lights to green.

‘If you hit all greens on the way back, it’s nothing to do with me,’ she says.

‘You’re a star,’ Owe says, then hangs up.

He’s been good to her since the incident. Helping out with little things, complaining less, asking how she is. She thinks it’s not just a change that’s come over him because he’s treating her still, but that something inside him has changed and is evolving. She’d seen it happening bit by bit after Jack had brought him back. There had been the terrible rage and despair, shouting in the face of Death itself and then… a stillness. Perhaps not an acceptance, more of a willingness to go with it while it lasts, for however long it did. It was easy most of the time for all of them to pretend Owen was just Owen, complete with beating heart, hardworking lungs and the ability to heal. Even when he didn’t eat or drink when the rest of them did, Tosh found she could look past it, that her brain just accepted it.

The things you got used to with Torchwood.

As she had thought she was dying, Tosh had tried to confess her love for him again.

‘None of that now, Tosh,’ he had said, squeezing her hand tightly. ‘You’re only trying to tell me that because you think it’s goodbye, aren’t you? You just saved my bony arse up at that nuclear plant and I’ll be damned if I don’t return the favour.’

Now they were even. A life for a life, not that any of that mattered to Tosh. Her attempted confession cloaked so much of what was said between them these days – but it cloaked them with warmth, with familiarity, and with comfort. She wasn’t expecting Owen to say the words. She knew he loved her in his own way.

And if that could grow into something more… They would see. Tosh knew Owen had very good reasons for not broaching the subject again – namely, he was dead and would never be able to give her what a living and breathing partner could. She respects this even though she’s sure she wouldn’t care.

She hasn’t tried to tell him that. She needs his friendship more than anything.

‘Miss Tosh?’ a little voice pipes up behind her. Joseph had been snoring away on the sofa through most of the action.

‘Hello, Joseph,’ she says, turning to him. ‘Did you sleep well?’

His sandy hair sticks up in all sorts of directions. He rubs at his bleary eyes. She’d noticed he had been a fidgety sleeper, shifting side-to-side and muttering in his sleep. 

‘I think so, Miss Tosh,’ he says. ‘I dreamt I was back on the ship only I couldn’t remember my way around. I was lost.’

‘You’re here now though,’ she offers, thinking that he’s even more lost here than he was in the dream. She knows what it’s like to have to put your faith in someone else when there is no other hope.

‘I didn’t have my compass,’ he tells her. He gets up off the sofa and pads towards her in his bare feet. ‘I always have my compass, but not in that dream. Here, see.’

He fishes around in his trouser pocket before holding a small metal box up to her. It’s made of a cheap metal, dented, with rust flakes at the hinges. He opens it carefully, as if it’s the most precious thing to him. There’s a crack in the glass covering the compass dial inside. Strangely, the finger within can’t seem to decide which direction to point in, circling round and round.

‘Very useful for a cabin boy,’ she says.

‘I got it when my daddy died, he had it on the ships before me,’ he says proudly. He brings it up to his face to study it closely. ‘It’s broken!’

‘Was it not like that before?’ Tosh asks, already speculating.

The boy looks close to tears.

‘No, it used to work proper! It were a bit scratched up but I could hold it out like this and it’d show me where I am.’

He holds his arms out in front of him, balancing the compass on his palm. The finger continues to spin around the dial.

‘Can I see?’ Tosh asks gently.

Joseph snaps the compass shut and clutches it to his chest.

‘If I can take a look at it, I might be able to fix it,’ she says.

For a moment, Joseph holds the treasured possession closer still to his chest. He runs his grubby fingers over it as if calming a wriggling kitten. He studies Tosh closely, looks at the hand she’s holding out to him. She smiles softly. Hesitantly, he relinquishes his grip and places the compass carefully on her open palm. It’s cool to the touch.

‘I promise to keep it safe,’ she says.

‘And you’ll fix it?’

‘I will do my very best. Now, are you hungry? Let’s get you something to eat.’

*~*TW*~*

‘We’ve got big problems on our hands if we get another visit from our thirty-third century friends.’

Jack’s addressing the team from his position at the head of the boardroom table. He has returned to the hub with just Ianto and Owen in tow, having left Gwen at the golf club to deal with the police and coach them on a more appropriate response if the future slips through again.

‘If Gwen has better luck negotiating with them next time, we can at least hope they’ll stay in one place and not attack again,’ Ianto says.

‘That’s a big if,’ Jack says. He rubs his chest. He can still feel the phantom impact of the bullet that twisted its way through his torso earlier. ‘Tosh, anything you can do about predicting when these slips will happen?’

Tosh adjusts her glasses before she speaks, a habit she only falls into when she doesn’t have an answer, as if she thinks she can make a little change to her glasses and they’ll help her see the answers more clearly.

‘I don’t have enough data yet as we’ve only had a few events. None have happened concurrently though so we could assume we only have to deal with one appearance at a time. I’d prefer to have more data on that too, it’s a pretty big assumption and you know what they say about assumptions.’

‘They make an ass out of you and sumption,’ Ianto says, nodding sagely. Tosh swats at his arm and Owen sniggers. ‘I could look in the archives? Jack says this happened before, there must be some sort of records that could help you with your algorithm.’

‘Good idea, Ianto, get on it,’ Jack says. ‘You’ll want to look at records from 1945 and 1946, especially anything recorded by Eleri Page, she was very thorough.’

Ianto slips his notebook out of his inside pocket and scribbles this down.

‘Got it. Back in a bit.’

As Ianto walks away, Tosh slides something towards Jack – a small metal box.

‘What’s this?’ he asks.

‘Joseph gave it to me. It’s his compass, he had it in his pocket.’

Jack picks the dented case up and flips it open. The pointer on the dial rotates in a smooth circle. Jack tilts it around in his hand, trying to get it to settle on one direction.

‘Joseph says it was working before he came through the Rift. He’s pretty upset about it, actually.’

Jack snaps the compass shut.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this with the Rift and modern navigation technology. Something like this though, relying on the earth’s magnetism, that’s been pulled through from one time to another?’

‘It makes a kind of sense,’ Tosh says. ‘In the sense that the Rift rarely makes sense.’

Owen reaches over and picks the compass up to study it himself, turning it around, checking every side of it.

‘Can it help us or this just a fun bit of Rift trivia?’ he asks.

‘I’ve got a theory that it could help,’ Tosh says.

She doesn’t continue. She studies the table, avoiding their eyes.

‘Go on, Tosh,’ Jack prompts.

‘I was thinking earlier, after Gwen mentioned Tommy…’ she says, still not looking up. Not for the first time, Jack wishes he had not been so involved in the heartbreaks Tosh has suffered. ‘These time slips may be different to what happened with him but what if the solution is similar?’

‘Tommy had that key though, didn’t he?’ Owen says. ‘It was always here, waiting for him to take back.’

‘I think we could make the compass the key,’ she says. ‘I tapped into a few ways to manipulate residual Rift energies as I was working on my time lock project and we can use it here. The compass already has trace Rift energy as it came through the Rift with Joseph. If we can boost that a bit, send Joseph back through carrying it, it might calm the Rift. It’ll recognise the difference between this time and his, the particles carry different traces.’

‘Like introducing antibodies to the bloodstream?’ Owen says.

‘Exactly.’

‘I like it, Tosh, I understand the theory but… How do we boost the Rift energies on the compass?’ Jack asks.

‘It’s even more theoretical than what I just suggested but we could place the compass at the heart of the Rift manipulator. It swarms with Rift energy every time something comes through. We can place it in there safely as long as we knows the Rift is settled in that moment. Then, when something next comes through, it should douse the compass.’

Jack takes the compass back from Owen. The pointer continues to spin at a steady pace.

‘It’s worth a shot, at least,’ he says.

‘How do we manage phase two?’ Owen asks. ‘The stage where we have to send the kid back? How do we know when the time will be right?’

‘I can help with that,’ Ianto says, reappearing at the doors, a hefty stack of musty folders in arms. ‘You were right, Jack, Eleri Page was very thorough.’

He drops the pile of paperwork onto the table with a muffled thunk.

‘These should help you out, Tosh. Eleri documented every time slip they had after the war. The good news is, there seems to be a pattern to them. The slips in each location happen at regular intervals so we should be able to pick out when they’ll occur.’

‘And the bad news?’ Jack asks. Ianto puts his hands on his hips.

‘It looks like, right before the Rift sorted itself out, the time slips were happening more and more frequently, including in different locations at the same time. Eleri estimates that around two dozen people went missing in the time slips. Hard to know for definite, people went unaccounted for more than usual in that time and the police weren’t very co-operative.’

‘Don’t we know how that feels,’ Jack says. He slaps his hand down on the desk. ‘Seems like we need to move quickly. Tosh, Ianto, work on updating the Rift predictor algorithm with your new data. I’ll place the compass in the Rift manipulator and Owen can make sure I don’t die again today while I do it.’

*~*TW*~*

Jack has only just slotted the compass – with Joseph’s agreement – into the Rift manipulator when Gwen calls.

‘It’s happening again,’ she says, having to shout as there’s clearly a lot going on behind her. Jack can hear several engines running and a voice bellowing orders. ‘They won’t listen to me, they’re calling in military support and are prepared to engage.’

‘We’ll be right there, Gwen,’ Jack says. ‘Don’t get yourself involved, you hear me? If they want to pick a fight, it’s their fight.’

He rushes up to his office, taking the steps from the bottom of the Rift manipulator two at a time. At Tosh’s desk, Ianto reads lists of numbers out to Tosh so she can input them: times, dates and co-ordinates. He looks up from his papers to Jack. Tosh is busy typing away but Jack knows she’s listening.

‘0-4-56, 28-12-1-9-4-5 – do you need us, Jack?’

Jack slips into his coat in the doorway and shakes his head.

‘You two keep working here, we’re going to need this,’ he says, then yells over to the Med Bay. ‘Owen, with me, now!’

Jack slips his earpiece on. A small voice from waist height asks,

‘What about me, Captain?’

Jack had nearly forgotten about Joseph. Due to his lack of shoes, Tosh has given the boy a pair of fluffy purple slippers that she keeps under her desk for cold days in the hub. They clash magnificently with his dirty cabin boy garb and are just as ill-fitting even though Tosh has tiny feet. Jack crouches down to the boy’s level.

‘Help Tosh and Ianto if they ask,’ he says. ‘Then we’re going to have a big job for you to do for us soon. It won’t be hard but you’ll have to be very brave. Do you think you’ll be able to do that for me?’ 

Joseph nods.

‘Yes, Captain.’

Jack smiles and resists the urge to ruffle Joseph’s tangle of hair. He likes the kid calling him Captain all the time. At last, some respect around here.

‘Oi!’ Owen shouts over to him from the door to the garage. ‘Hurry up!’

*~*TW*~*

Gwen just wants to have a long, hot bath. This morning’s stomach problems have been replaced by a thumping headache courtesy of trying to get through to DCI Brooks, who would do the opposite of what anyone from Torchwood says even if they told him _not_ to jump off a cliff.

Gwen has seen plenty of DCIs like him in her time, he fits the mould completely. God created man in his own image and the old school brigade within the South Wales Police like to promote those who looked just like the man who came before him – obstinate, wiry-haired, and a permanent flush to his skin from too many years drinking off the tough cases. Detective Swanson may have given Torchwood flack at times but at least she listened before making a judgement call.

He’s pulled together quite a circus at the golf club in a short space of time. He has several of his own men on hand, two-armed response units, and a jeep of squaddies from the nearest barracks rolled in only minutes ago. The helicopter is back overhead, circling low. Dusk is falling, but the flash of blue sirens lights the car park.

Gwen has counted six semi-automatics and four assault rifles. The armed response unit sent a sniper to scope out the roof of the clubhouse while the rest of them buckle smoke grenades to their chest. She doesn’t want to guess at what Brooks went to take a look at in the back of the army van. They’re gearing up for a fight they don’t even understand. 

As the familiar sight of the SUV blasts up the drive, Brooks takes up a resolute stance next to Gwen.

‘I’m going to tell your captain exactly what I told you,’ he says.

‘And I’m sorry to tell you, DCI Brooks, that if you think _I’m_ stubborn you’re going to have a barrel of laughs with Jack,’ she replies.

She’s resolved to ignore the man and do what else she can to help. There are bigger things at stake here.

‘Gwen, status update,’ Jack says as he marches over, Owen at his heels. Gwen suspects Jack deliberately pulls his military phrases out for show around people like Brooks.

‘It’s been coming through slowly for fifteen minutes,’ Gwen replies. ‘We’ve nearly got the same length of ship as last time now. There was someone brought in with it initially but they ran back through the slip and disappeared.’

‘We suspect he went for back-up,’ Brooks cuts in. He offers a hand out to Jack. ‘DCI Brooks.’

Jack shakes Brooks’ hand, his eyes narrowed.

‘Captain Jack Harkness. I’ve heard a lot about you, Detective,’ he says.

‘Ditto.’

‘I haven’t liked everything I’ve heard, Brooks, but I’ll forgive and forget if you work with us on this,’ Jack says.

Brooks shakes his head. ‘There’s a lot of people in this city who’d like to forget about Torchwood. For that, I can’t forgive you and I’m even less inclined to take orders from you.’

Jack pulls the shorter man in closer – Gwen knew there was a reason he was dragging the handshake out, it’s one of Jack’s favourite power moves.

‘We know what people are saying about us but, believe me, they couldn’t even try to understand everything we do for this city. If we screwed up, then we’ve learnt from it, and we’re going to be the ones to fix it. So when I tell you and your men to stand down, if you love this city so much, you’d damned well better do it.’

Jack relinquishes his grip on Brooks with a shove. Brooks flexes the fingers on the hand Jack had just had in his.

‘You’ll have to make me, Captain.’

Brooks sneers and walks away.

Jack wipes his hand on his coat.

‘He has such sweaty hands,’ he says.

‘What’re we going to do, Jack?’ Gwen asks. ‘He’s determined to have it off with them, says they made the first move.’

‘Unless he’s even more of an idiot than he’s already shown us he is, he can’t fire on them unless they attack first, it’s more than his job’s worth. Even his army boys over there will agree with that.’

‘So what, we should just let them?’

Gwen feels like she’s facing off with Jack, staring him down, expecting him to give an answer she’s not going to like and preparing her rebuttal.

‘Jack, sorry to interrupt,’ Tosh comes in over the comms.

Jack tears his eyes away from Gwen’s.

‘Go for it, Tosh.’

‘Ianto and I have finished inputting the data. It looks like things are moving faster here than they did last time, we’ve got overlapping time slips coming up – there’s another slip appearing where we found Joseph in ten minutes, if we can get him over there-,’

‘Do it. Give him our best, prepare him for what’s to come, and get this fixed.’

Jack must feel Gwen’s eyes on him because he sighs and says,

‘He’s going back to his own time, Gwen. Even if him returning doesn’t sort everything out here, he’ll be home.’

‘And in the mean time you’ll let the police wage their war?’

Jack pulls his sleeve up and checks his watch. He taps it and his lips move silently as he calculates something.

‘Yes, Gwen, I will.’

‘But Jack -,’

‘No, no “but Jack”. Trust me. Owen wants me to be more open with you, and then Ianto agreed, so I’ll let you in on what we’re going to do – a little Torchwood PR.’

Without actually explaining as he had just promised to do, Jack grins and strides over to the SUV. Gwen looks at Owen.

‘Do you know what he’s on about?’ she asks.

‘If we want Jack to listen to us we need to get Ianto on side first?’

*~*TW*~*

It’s getting dark by the time they get to the warehouse in the docks, a cloudy night that hides the stars. Ianto leads the way, opening the door to the space they need and helping them both through.

Tosh hands Joseph his compass. He takes it from her with both hands. He still wears her emergency slippers.

‘It’s warm,’ he says.

‘It’ll always be warm now,’ she says. ‘That’ll be nice when you’re at sea, won’t it?’

He doesn’t say anything, just presses the metal to his cheek, his eyes wide.

‘We’ve got one minute,’ Ianto says, looking between his stopwatch and his PDA.

‘And then I go?’ Joseph asks.

On the other side of town, Gwen is helping Jack and Owen wheel the ridiculous contraption they’ve thrown together across the golf course. They’re taking a wide angle to the spaceship as the armed response unit have moved forward to form a tight semi-circle around it.

Gwen picks up a spool of cable that’s fallen off the fold-down wheeled laptop trolley that she hadn’t realised was kept in the boot of the SUV at all times. Owen keeps pushing it while Jack slots together the large weapon that had saved Gwen and Rhys’ lives on their wedding day.

‘This better bloody work, Jack,’ she says through gritted teeth as the wheels of the trolley catch in the grass and she and Owen have to battle to get it loose.

‘When will you people learn to have a little faith?’ Jack says, cranking the barrel onto the end of his over-sized gun.

‘When you stand down as Torchwood press officer,’ Owen says.

The unmistakable sound of marching echoes across the field. Gwen looks over to the spaceship and sees two columns of armed men snaking through the time slip. The armed response units raise their guns to their eyes, taking aim.

‘What happens if they’re too far away when Joseph goes through?’ Gwen asks. ‘What if they get left behind and they open fire?’ 

Jack looks over to the clubhouse. Like all good generals, Brooks has sent his men forward but hung back himself.

‘Then it’s his problem.’

The time slip appears just as Gwen and Owen had described it earlier, washing in bit by bit. There’s daylight in the other time, the golden daylight of a late summer afternoon streaming through the cracks in the roof Tosh can see appearing ahead of them. Suddenly, the whole room is awash with the stench of fish and salt, with a jumble of voices calling over one another.

Tosh cups Joseph’s chin and he looks up at her.

‘There’s your home,’ she says. ‘All you have to do is walk right back over there and open your compass. Open it like you need to check which way you’re going.’

Joseph’s brown eyes study Tosh, full of questions he doesn’t have the words to ask.

‘I promise you’ll be ok. It didn’t hurt when you came here, did it?’

He shakes his head.

‘It’ll be just the same,’ she says. ‘Are you ready?’

The columns of thirty-third century men come to a halt. A figure steps forward from within their ranks. He holds one arm up, poised to command his people to fire.

Jack checks his watch again.

‘Any second now,’ he says. ‘Get the lights going.’

Owen rolls his eyes but does as Jack says. The strip lights from the windscreen of the SUV, now attached to the laptop trolley, flicker to life and bathe the golf course in pale blue.

‘On my command,’ a man’s voice calls from the clubhouse amplified by a loudspeaker.

‘Come on Joseph,’ Jack says, closing his eyes. Gwen puts her hand to her own gun, just in case.

‘I’m ready,’ Joseph says. ‘Thank you, Miss Tosh.’

‘Thank you, Joseph,’ Tosh smiles. ‘Goodbye.’

He smiles back. ‘Goodbye.’

Tosh waves as the cabin boy, compass in hand and feet slippered, walks back into his own time. Bathed in sunlight, he turns to check on Tosh and Ianto over his shoulder and Tosh nods. He raises his compass and opens it, then he disappears completely. They’re plunged back into darkness.

It happens in an instant. The leader of the army of the future had been midway through lowering his arm in a firing gesture when he winked out of existence, along with his army and spaceship.

Jack whoops and punches the air.

‘Jack!’ Owen hisses. ‘Keep pointing that thing at them, you’re supposed to be pretending Torchwood are saving the day right here when they can see.’

Jack laughs and shoulders the gun, pointing it towards where the spaceship had been. It isn’t loaded.

The armed response unit look around themselves in confusion. A familiar, angry voice booms at them through the loudspeaker.

‘What did you do, Torchwood?’

‘Saved your asses,’ Jack yells back. ‘Just like we always do!’

Ianto flicks his torch on. The warehouse is claustrophobically silent.

‘Alright, Tosh?’ he asks.

Tosh continues staring into the space that had just been, a time that had just been. She looks over to Ianto.

‘Yeah, it worked, I’m…’

‘He’ll be ok, Tosh, he’ll live the life he was meant to, however that went.’

The tense changes in Ianto’s sentence make Tosh’s head hurt. She’s had enough time travel for one day. Ianto crooks his elbow and offers Tosh his arm. She takes it.

‘I hope he had a good life,’ she says as they walk away, arm-in-arm.

**Author's Note:**

> **Torchwood theme music**
> 
> Next time in episode 2: A return to the countryside - with added vampires.
> 
> PS - Additional apologies for any fluent Welsh speakers. Like Ianto, I relied on the remnants of a ten year old GCSE qualification...


End file.
